Settling down here, so you'll always know where to find us.

December 7, 2015

A Game of Inches

If you Google “a game of inches” most of the initial results refer to a speech given by Al Pacino in the movie Any Given Sunday. Having never seen the film, I had to go read the speech to see if me and Al were talking about the same thing.

Basically, yes.

Turns out the best toys aren’t toys at all.

These days, our life is very much a game of inches. I pack two boxes, my crafty three-year-old dumps a third that had not yet been sealed. I sweep up one mess in the living room, he finds the bag of dried beans on the counter. I change one diaper, then another. Then another.

Then, often as not, another.

I spend a big chunk of my time taking care of these beautiful miracles.

And they’re getting both getting smarter every day.

This was a fun one – Nolan liked when I wrapped the pipe cleaners around my fingers, but he was very clear about his preferred color scheme. He was also deeply frustrated that I didn’t have a sixth finger for the purple one.

Big’un here still doesn’t have much to say. Here most of all, it’s a game of inches — as in, we have to fight like hell for every inch of progress we make. Our biggest victory to date has popped up in just the last few days: Nolan will now respond when you say his name. It works better than fifty percent of the time, which is a far sight better than ‘never’.

Wardrobe courtesy of Auntie M. I PROMISE I AM GOING TO CUT HIS HAIR.

I cannot tell you how gratifying, how relieving it is just to have the affirmation that he not only can hear but can understand that small thing.

Also encouraging was this photo my mother sent – nice to see at least one of these guys takes after his mom!

We’re neck deep in packing (and re-packing). John is working every extra hour he can manage during our last few weeks here, sometimes with night shift, sometimes on days. We’re all hanging in there, but this phase is turning out to be one of the crazier parts of our adventure in the Great White North.

The famous Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge, as seen from Bentleyville Tour of Lights. There just happened to be a full moon rising while we checked out the Christmas lights on the lake!